


Of Miracle and Wonder

by fypical



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Space, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-07
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:45:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fypical/pseuds/fypical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael Milton is a scientist aboard a long-term deep space research mission. Gabriel is the stowaway alien with a shady past he finds one night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dawnperhaps](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawnperhaps/gifts).



They’re not supposed to leave their quarters this late – although what ‘late’ is nowadays Michael’s unsure – but he’d left his notes in the research centre. The ship isn’t terribly large, just big enough to fit the crew and the necessary rooms for a long-term deep space exploration mission.  He’s half-asleep still, padding quietly through the corridors in bare feet and pyjama bottoms, and that’s when he runs into it.

What ‘it’ is, he can’t quite tell at first, because they literally run into each other, and then it’s making a sounds not unlike a hiss and scrambling back, staring at Michael with wide eyes. Michael blinks himself back to full consciousness, and can’t really help the fact that he stares. It _looks_ human. Mostly. It’s hard to tell from where Michael’s standing because the creature’s backed itself up against a wall and is crouched there, shaking. He takes a step towards it and it makes the strange hissing sound again, baring teeth that aren’t exactly fangs but are too sharp to be humanoid.

“It’s alright,” he says quietly, not even knowing if the alien speaks English or not, and not really knowing what’s possessed him to try and calm it down instead of just tranq-ing it and getting an explanation for why it stowed away later. “It’s alright, I won’t hurt you.”

The alien blinks at him, still shied away, and then relaxes slightly, edging forward as Michael crouches down, reaching out a hand. He feels the cool touch before he really realizes that it’s pressing its fingers against his and looking curious.

“You’re human,” the alien says, its English good but with a strong and hypnotic accent. Michael nods and it frowns. “I wasn’t expecting humans,” it says quietly, but doesn’t pull away. Michael thinks its eyes look haunted, but he’s never seen this species before, so maybe that’s normal. He can see the strange skin-coloured scales spattered across its cheeks and neck and shoulders now, how they trail down its chest and get sparse the lower they go—

Michael stops following the trail. The scales look soft, and Michael can’t help but reach out to try and touch them. The alien jerks back, staring at his hand like it’s a weapon, but Michael’s curious; with stubbornness cultivated by years of unsatisfactory lab results he reaches further and manages to ghost his fingers over the scales on its cheek before it freezes, making a soft broken sound.

“Is that—does that hurt?” Michael asks abortively, and it shakes its head minutely, staring at him again and looking uncertain and slightly frightened. Michael reaches out again, a scientific impulse, but instead of feeling the oddly soft scales again there’s a sharp pain shooting through his wrist and his movement stops.  He glances down, surprised to see long fingers wrapped in a iron grip around his arm, then looks back up at the alien.

“Don’t,” it says in a low rumble, and Michael blinks, then nods, grateful for the fact that his sense of self-preservation has decided to kick in. The grip releases a little, and then those same fingers are stroking soothingly over his skin. The pain ebbs slowly away, and Michael nods again, standing up and offering his hand to the creature. It looks up at him with something undefinable in its eyes, before curling its hand around Michael’s and standing slowly. He’d expected it to be taller, with its long flexible-looking limbs, but it’s a solid few inches shorter than him. It’s androgynous verging on masculine and clings to him almost immediately. Michael wonders if it’s always so quiet.  He takes it back to his quarters, moving quietly and ignoring his forgotten notes; he’ll get them tomorrow. And maybe add this creature to them. It’s sentient, obviously, and since there’s no language barrier it’s not like he can pretend it has no free will. But he can at least make notes about what it’s letting him see.

“I’m Michael,” he says once they’re in his quarters and the door is shut. The alien curls up immediately on his bed, absently tugging at the comforter he’d brought from home.  It looks up at him again, twitching something like a smile and nodding.

“Do you…have a name?” Michael asks, and when the alien makes a sound like a laugh he realizes how stupid the question sounds. “…That I can pronounce?”

The alien smiles again and speaks again in its lilting accent.

“The best translation of it is Gabriel,” it says quietly. “Like the angel?” It sounds uncertain, and gives him a look like it’s looking for his approval. Michael nods and it beams. He figures Gabriel is male, but is a little nervous about gendering it.

“Okay, Gabriel,” he says. “Where are you from?”

Gabriel shrinks back again, shaking his head and drawing his knees up to his chest again. He’s wearing pants made of the same light fabric that everyone seems to wear on the planets they’ve landed on for fueling. They ride up when he curls in on himself, revealing that his ankles and feet at least bear the same smattering of scales over them. Michael carefully sits on the bed, offering his hand, palm up. Gabriel stares at him for a moment before placing his cool hand atop Michael’s. His skin is dry and soft, and Michael thinks irresistibly of snakeskin.

“I snuck on here to get away from before,” Gabriel mutters, canting his eyes downward, and Michael nods again. “Alright,” he says simply, and Gabriel visibly relaxes, slumping a little. Michael’s not sure what to do next.

“Do you sleep?” he asks, feeling once more rather stupid, but Gabriel bites his lip, nodding slowly and pulling his hand back, giving Michael an unsure look before tipping sideways and slowly stretching out on Michael’s bed. Michael blinks, then lets out a soft ‘oh’ as he’s tugged down and enveloped in cool and vaguely spidery limbs. Gabriel presses his face into the side of Michael’s neck, and by the time Michael really cognizes what’s happened, the alien is asleep against him, still curled around him possessively.

Michael wonders what he's gotten himself into.


	2. ii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael gets used to Gabriel's presence, slowly but surely.

Michael wakes and Gabriel is gone. He can’t help but panic for the brief moment between waking and full consciousness, until he hears a surprised little sound from somewhere in the room. He gets up slowly, despite his worries, and rubs a hand over his face. When he opens his eyes again, he’s met by Gabriel peering at him from the floor. The alien’s crouched by the bed, looking curiously up at Michael with his strange, too-human eyes, and Michael’s too tired to resist how endeared he is by the curiosity there.

“I thought I imagined humans,” Gabriel says quietly, after a moment. Michael considers that, but Gabriel doesn’t seem too broken up about it, so he sort of mentally shrugs, and reaches down to brush his fingers over Gabriel’s forehead; the alien shivers but doesn’t pull away, which he takes as a good sign.

“Come back to bed,” Michael murmurs in response, and Gabriel glances up with something like surprise written across his features, before eagerly scrambling back under the covers and plastering himself against Michael. Michael once more wonders where Gabriel comes from, considers even asking, but Gabriel’s gone limp and sleepy in Michael’s arms, nuzzling into his neck. It seems a shame to wake him just to ask him something he won’t answer.

It’s another two hours before Michael manages to untangle himself from Gabriel’s full-body cling in order to go to the lab and finish the research he’s supposed to be doing. He’s on edge the whole time, jumping when he nearly bumps into the resident medical expert, Zachariah.

“Nightmare?” Zachariah asks, and though his tone’s bland, there’s something in his eyes that always makes Michael nervous. He’s heard of the ethically ambiguous tests that Zachariah’s done, and he’s not sure he wants the doctor to know that there’s a non-human aboard.

Michael waves him off and works as quickly as he can, scribbling half-legible notes about the plant samples they collected on the last uncolonized world. It still takes him two hours, and then he sneaks to the kitchen – not that he needs to, everyone knows he usually has dinner in his own room – and takes twice the amount of food, half of it for Gabriel.

He’s greeted by sleepy sullenness from Gabriel, who’s glowering at him from underneath the comforter, his dirty blonde, baby-soft hair sticking up in at least four different directions. Michael wonders when the last time Gabriel slept, remembers how turned around his own sleep schedule got when he first set out into space.

“I brought you…dinner, I guess,” Michael says quietly, which earns him another, more baleful glare.

“I don’t eat,” Gabriel snaps. “At least not _your_ food.”

Michael doesn’t know whether that means Gabriel refuses to eat it because it’s Michael’s or if it’s because it’s for humans.

He doesn’t find out.

It goes on like that for weeks, and Michael doesn’t once mention that there’s a disgruntled alien living in his bedroom and sharing his amenities.

Gabriel has what Michael’s taken to mentally labeling ‘bad days’, where Michael will come back from the lab to find him huddled in the corner. Michael moves slow on those days, sets the food he’s kept stealing for Gabriel aside, and crouches in front of him, keeping them on the same level.

Sometimes it takes minutes, sometimes hours, but Gabriel eventually relaxes, and reaches out to brush his fingers over Michael’s jaw, as if assuring himself that Michael is in fact real. It’s a habit they’ve fallen into, and sometimes Michael wakes to the sensation of cool fingertips tracing his jaw.

“I’ve never fucked a human,” Gabriel says casually one day, sneaking a glance out of the crack in the door as he’s taken to doing. Michael splutters, and Gabriel turns and gives him a curious look, like being so blase about sex is common to him.

Maybe it is. 

He still hasn’t told Michael anything about when he snuck aboard or where he’s from; if he has family there, people who miss him. Michael thinks  _someone_  must miss Gabriel’s crooked smile, his sharp sense of humour, the way he wants simply to  _know_. 

“There aren’t humans where you’re from?” Michael asks, knowing he’s made a mistake when the curious look turns intense and dangerous, and in the space it would take to blink, Gabriel’s in his personal space, and Michael’s nose-to-nose with an alien of indeterminate threat level. 

He forces himself to remember that just because Gabriel’s treated him with detached interest so far doesn’t mean Gabriel’s always going to, and breathes out. “I’m sorry,” he says, very quietly, and Gabriel makes a sound that’s somewhere between a sigh and a whimper. It’s become something like a tradition; Michael oversteps his bounds and ends up with Gabriel curled in a ball somewhere, not speaking.

It’s never ended up with Gabriel curled up in Michael’s lap like he is now, though. And Gabriel doesn’t seem as upset as he usually is. He’s just…quiet. 

“No,” Gabriel says after a moment, “there are no humans where I’m from.”

It’s the most Michael’s learned about Gabriel’s past in the six weeks the alien’s been on board. He doesn’t get the chance to learn much more, though, because Gabriel’s cool and slender fingers are splaying over his cheek, touching as though Gabriel can’t figure out human skin. 

Michael knows he can, since it’s not the first time this has happened. Nevertheless, he allows it to happen since he knows Gabriel’s not just doing it for fun. The alien’s strangely tactile, and still spends a lot of time running shaky hands over Michael’s face and neck and hands.

“It’s okay,” Michael says, and, “I’m sorry” once more, but Gabriel just presses his face against Michael’s neck, shivers and then goes limp when Michael carefully strokes over the spattering of scales down Gabriel’s neck and across his shoulders. He’s stopped jumping when Michael touches them, at least the ones that aren’t anywhere particularly vulnerable, and has started almost encouraging Michael to touch. Michael figures any progress is good progress.

He doesn’t know what’s going to happen if or when Gabriel makes himself known to the rest of the crew, but for now Michael’s entirely content to sit quietly and let Gabriel cling to him. 

It’s the next day when Michael returns from the lab that Gabriel’s missing, and Michael at first thinks he’s hiding in the shower, or under the sink, or some other obscure place that Gabriel likes finding and hiding in.

He’s not.

He’s not in Michael’s room at all.

Michael suddenly finds that he can’t breathe.


	3. iii.

Gabriel drifts in and out of a haze. He can’t remember waking up in the strange human’s bed – Michael, it says its name is, and it’s nicer than he expected – but the first time he comes to, the surface under his back is cold and hard very unlike a bed; he thinks he may struggle but everything feels heavy, like he’s underwater, and he can barely hear the smug voice telling him to please calm down.

It’s overwhelmingly familiar, too much like his first time, in the before, and Gabriel squeezes his eyes shut, forces himself to slip back under, into blissful darkness.

He fades in and out with uncomfortable pinches and prods, the smug voice saying things like ‘completely unprecedented’ and ‘would make a fine subject’. He tries to struggle again, and realizes he can’t, letting his head fall to one side to make out the blurred impression of a restraint around his wrist.

He wonders vaguely if he’d been fighting even when he was unconscious. It would have been a feat, probably.

He’s not surprised but he doesn’t want to be awake anymore; Gabriel struggles harder against the restraints and then suddenly there is rather a lot of yelling and he’s not entirely sure what’s happening, but there’s another pinch, in his arm, just under his scales, and his world goes black once more.

\----

Michael’s panic transforms into sharp and immediate planning, and he dresses as quickly as he can before fleeing his quarters. The first place he checks is the kitchen, in case Gabriel’s finally decided to eat human food, but when he isn’t there, Michael goes very still and listens.

He can hear the faint sounds of Joshua speaking calmingly to the ship, as is his strange habit, and a rattling of voices further away; they sound triumphant, and Michael bolts towards them.

It’s not a pretty sight when he gets there, to witness Gabriel struggling sluggishly and futilely against the bonds holding him in place. He’s been stripped of the light pants he’d been wearing and is spread out like some sort of specimen on Zachariah’s operating table. Michael doesn’t hesitate, he doesn’t even really think as he’s shoving the various assistants aside, their shouts of protest falling on uncaring ears. It’s too late to get to Gabriel and reassure him, tell him everything’s all right (though it isn’t), and that Michael’s going to get him out, because Zachariah’s jabbed him already with what seems to be a sedative.

Michael can’t hold back the snarl that breaks free at the smug, self-satisfied look on the doctor’s face, but focuses his attention on undoing the restraints pinning Gabriel to the table. The alien curls in on himself, probably a subconscious reaction to whatever was happening to him; Michael shrugs off his jacket and while it doesn’t make for a very effective blanket, it at least keeps Gabriel from remaining exposed.

“Explain,” he growls, but Zachariah looks unfazed.

“Was this yours?” he asks calmly, glancing at Gabriel like he’s some sort of thoughtless animal. Michael fights the urge to hit Zachariah, who shrugs once. “We found it wandering around the place. I’ve never seen anything like it, it’s got both male and female features – probably infertile, of course-”

Michael cuts him off with another snarl, but Zachariah smiles slowly, like he’s discovered a great secret. Michael thinks he knows what it is.

“What would Joshua say if he knew you were holding a stowaway?” he wonders aloud, and Michael feels a shock of panic go through him. Joshua’s kind and a little strange, but he’s strict about rules, and Michael can’t really bear to think about Gabriel getting dropped off on some colony world to have gods-know-what happen to him.

Before Michael can protest, Zachariah is sweeping out of the room, leaving him with the still-unconscious Gabriel. Michael can’t really contain his panic, but he pulls up a chair and seats himself by the table all the same, trailing his fingers through Gabriel’s hair once before letting his hand drop, thinking that Gabriel would probably be annoyed by that.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, though it’s likely Gabriel can’t hear him. “About this, regardless of what Joshua says.”

He stays quiet for the rest of the time it takes for Zachariah to return, Joshua in tow. Michael’s expecting the worst, and frankly, he thinks he’d fight to be thrown off with Gabriel to at least make sure the alien survives. It’s become his primary focus recently, and he’s not sure what he’d do with himself otherwise.

Joshua looks impassive, but his eyes dart to Gabriel, who by this point is shifting and making soft, sleepy sounds.

“I’d like to talk to it-” he starts and Michael shakes his head.

“Him,” he corrects; or at least, he hopes he’s correct. Joshua nods either way.

“I’d like to talk to him when he wakes up,” he finishes, and Michael doesn’t want to speak for Gabriel, but he nods anyway. The look Joshua gives Zachariah is much more hardened.

“My quarters,” he says, turning on his heel. “Now.”

Michael scoops Gabriel up into his arms, trying to ignore the initial unconscious struggle, and carefully carries him back to his quarters, laying him on the bed and piling more blankets atop him than is probably necessary, before sitting on the floor near the head of the bed.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when he wakes, it’s to foreign, frightened chattering above his head. At first, he’s too groggy to make out what’s going on.

Then he remembers what happened, and turns around to see Gabriel curled in a tiny ball, wrapped in blankets, and staring at him with wide eyes; he looks frightened, but on top of that he looks hurt and more than a little angry.

“Gabriel,” Michael attempts, but Gabriel bares his too-sharp teeth in a hiss. Michael knows the signs of panic, he can tell that Gabriel’s probably working solely on instinct, and he backs away slowly, raising his hands peaceably. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he promises, keeping his voice low and calming but not moving once he’s backed up.

Gabriel keeps his teeth bared in a snarl, but goes quiet, his body relaxing slightly; eventually he returns to curling in on himself, averting his eyes from Michael and looking shamed. Michael keeps his distance until Gabriel makes a soft, sort of broken sound; he edges back over to the bed, not climbing onto it yet, but lays his hand on the sheets.

It takes ten minutes before he feels Gabriel’s cool, dry hand envelop his, and he looks up just in time to get pulled into the nest that Gabriel seems to have made. Gabriel lets go of Michael’s hand briefly once he’s there, looking strangely tentative.

Michael raises a hand, ignoring Gabriel’s flinch to brush his fingers slowly through Gabriel’s hair, feeling the alien shudder then relax into the touch.

Carefully, Michael pulls Gabriel down with him, enfolds him in his arms, and lets Gabriel go limp and a little shaky against him.

“It’s okay,” Michael murmurs as Gabriel presses his face into Michael’s neck, and he continues to stroke through Gabriel’s hair as Gabriel breaks down entirely, clinging to Michael and trembling; his harsh, raw-sounding sobs are dry, however, and when he pulls back to look at Michael sheepishly, his eyes are a little harder than usual.

Michael can’t keep himself from kissing him.


End file.
